From Snakes-and-Ladders to Snakes & Scorpions

Unknown
Saturday, 11 July 2015

By S.
Narendra

(Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal
Information Officer to

Government of India & Spokesperson)

“Narendra, the prime minister has said that
he would wind up DAVP. There have been serious problems with the printing and
distribution of PM’s speeches. Saving DAVP depends upon you,” said the affable
secretary of I&B ministry P.Murari to me as I was sent to head DAVP as its
first Director General. By upholding the official ad policy of political
neutrality and non-discrimination, distancing from media political games and restoring DAVP’s professional
credibility were few of the apparent challenges. These had to be accomplished
in an election year, 1989, when official media system like DAVP come under
maximum political stress. Read on for yet another interesting blast from the
past.

Irrespective of the party is in power, they
all misuse the official media machinery for perception management, and it tends
to get worse in an election year. Luckily for The Rajiv Gandhi government, the
Jawaharlal Nehru’s centenary that coincided with its penultimate year in office,
offered a legitimate opportunity for opening the government media advertising. Other
reasons were being invented every other week to saturate the media for trumpeting
the achievements of the government. By
this time the ad revenues of Doordarshan & AIR had swelled. The newspapers - the only
private media available then - were making lots of hay in this pre-poll sunshine. The
influential sections among them were engaged in mutually destructive games for
cornering bigger slices of government patronage. Openly claiming to be
government-friendly, several of them – the likes of Times of India, National Herald, Hindustan
Times, Hindustan, Amrita Bazar Patrika, apart from scores of regional media
businessmen - were attempting to isolate
competition in order to improve their share of the official patronage. On the
other side, papers like the Indian Express, Statesman were feeding the
opposition with complaints that they were being denied official Ads. Even while
I was navigating this cross-fire, PMO had given me a select list of newspapers
to be given priority in Ad space as well as in effecting payments. A senior PMO
official was monitoring the implementation of this instruction.

Parliament
to Rescue: Suddenly, Parliament took up this
controversy in its questions hour. A very worried I&B minister,
H.K.L.Bhagat, also the parliamentary affairs minister, called me for a
briefing. He also enquired about the complaints against me. I seized this
opportunity, and submitted that he can turn the tables on the opposition by fully
disclosing the share of government Ads going to different newspapers. Despite
the pulls and pressures, we had struggled to maintain some balance in Ads
allocation and this helped us to disprove the complaints by a section of the disgruntled
media. The fear of Ad matters coming before Parliament came in handy in resisting
further government pressures to increasingly favour government-friendly media.

From April onwards I had scaled down DAVP
activities like printing and storing of publicity material and film production, as I did not want to mount
inventories. This precaution was taken mainly because there were hints that the
government could opt for early elections, and such inventories relating to
outgoing regime would not go down well with any successor government,
particularly if it happened to of a different political hue. By August , I had
spent most of the funds allocated and I definitely had no intention of asking
for more funds for new communication activities. I reckoned that not having funds
would help me to ward off government pressure to launch new ‘achievement’
projecting campaigns close to elections.

The Rationale:
Let me explain the rationale behind the government communication policy. It can
be broadly divided into following categories
- all clubbed under public service advertising (PSA).

The first category relates to awareness
building and empowerment campaigns (especially in a poor, developing country)
in support of development programmes (Like MNREGA, HIV/Aids prevention,
Mother& Child Development schemes
like ICDS, Janani Suraksha Yojana,
Swasthya Bima Yojana). These have now acquired the title BCC or behaviour change (desired
behaviour) communication.

The second category belongs to easing policy
and programme implementation and compliance ( e.g.GST, IT, Ease of Doing
Business).

Third, somewhat controversial field is the
government’s legitimate duty and need to put information in public space about its performance in
relation to its poll commitments (e.g.100 days achievements, annual reviews, new
schemes, rallyingcalls). This is a grey
area where performance accountability clashes with partisanpublicity
using public funds for political gains.

Parties criticising this from opposition
benches revel in exploiting this avenue when they are in power. Governments are
prone to overload this function of PSA when their electoral mandatenears the end.

Another category is the
public advocacy of certain policy options. For example, Rajiv Gandhi government
was keen to push through legislation for giving constitutional status to
Panchayat raj (local self governments)institutions and making elections to them
mandatory. Such communication again is controversial as there would be no political consensus on their goals and
benefits.

Early
Christmas Turkey! The Rajiv Gandhi government
was in the midst of a rough monsoon Parliament session, when there were hints
that it could seek early poll, after announcing a slew of populist measures.

Around this time, I was asked to be present as an
observer during a close-door presentation to be made to a group of ministers by select
advertising agencies. Invitees to this ministerial group were Romi Chopra, an
Ad guru of those days, Sam Pitroda, (and Jairam Ramesh who was assisting Rajiv
him). Apparently, this ministerial group had been asked to come up with an
election campaign. Presentations from top guns of first tier Ad and PR agencies
continued for from mid-September Monday to Thursday. This was to be followed by
a final presentation to be made the next Thursday before the PM by the selected
one or two agencies. We were unclear over the kind of brief to be given to the
agencies. It had been made clear that I was to be present only with a watching
brief.

By Thursday evening it became clear to the ministers
that none of the agencies had come up with an acceptable campaign theme and
there were no outlines of audio/video /print material scripts and there were no
‘scratch’ AV productions to be shown to PM in the following week.

The ministerial group was obviously in a panic
as they had to face the PM next week and present an acceptable campaign kit. I was summoned to a crisis management
meeting of this group. The senior minister
expressed appreciation of the good work being done by DAVP (nice to hear such words once in a way),
and requested me to produce a campaign kit. Until now, DAVP had been treated as
a pariah and I had been told that the PM had no confidence in DAVP’s
professional credentials. All professional talent was supposed to be outside
the government domain! I had barely four days to prove our capacity. Working day and night, with teams of empanelled
producers and printers, we managed to put together a kit. It consisted of two
30 minute audio cassettes, four video clips, six posters, four scripts for
booklets and four leaflets. The
ministerial team was much impressed by the kit and profusely thanked me. However,
there was one sour note. I was informed that they would not attribute the kit
to DAVP, as the PM was biased against it!,

Danger
Lurks in Success: In this hour of some joy, I
could not see a great danger lurking. K.Krishnakumar, the minister of state in
the I&B ministry called me to inform that the PM had expressed his
appreciation of the campaign and I
should attend a meeting the next morning. At this meeting the minister’s private
secretary Thomas (IAS) handed over a
paper containing the numbers of print and AV material required to be produced. The numbers were mind
boggling: a million copies of each
poster (6 versions), booklets (2 versions), leaflets (4) and some 10,000 copies
of each audio and video cassettes. At 1989 prices, the cost of production was
close to Rs 40 crore. All these items were to be produced in about two to three
weeks, before the announcement of elections. Sam Pitroda in one of the
earlier meetings had announced that the polls could be
held end-October. I had thought that once I handed over the campaign kit
materials for presentation to PM, the production and distribution would be
taken over by selected Ad agency and the Congress Party. But Krishnakumar said
that it had been decided to entrust this work to DAVP.

Rules
& Norms thrown to winds: I tried to duck for cover
under several genuine reasons. DAVP had no budget for such a huge job. The
minister said that PM had personally assured that such funds would be made
available. I raised another problem - even if we commandeered the entire public
and private production facilities in Delhi and elsewhere, such a mammoth job could
not be accomplished in the given three weeks time-frame. The minister summoned
a fellow Keralite businessman who was ready with a letter promising delivery of
the entire lot within the schedule. I had posed one more problem: DAVP can
undertake such huge job only on the basis of a requisition by a client
department. Promptly, a letter making such a request to DAVP from the
Directorate of Filed Publicity (DFP) was produced. This outfit had never in its
existence placed a request for print or
AV material with us! The Director of DFP had not only agreed to place a request
for such humongous quantity of supplies but had also promised to send bulk
supplies to his over 250 field units. From the latter, the campaign material
was to be lifted by the Congress party filed units.

I thought I had a last weapon to defend DAVP
against this blatant misuse. I told the minister that under the official rules
and procedures laid down, DAVP was mandated to go for open, pan-India tenders
for procurement of services costing more than a crore of rupees. Also, a high
value tender cannot be given to a single party and that too to a party without
any track record. Soon, the joint secretary of the ministry was called into the
meeting. This official informed the minister that he would give a letter to
DAVP authorising it to make a one-time exception to the rules. The minister was
very unhappy when I submitted to him that a joint secretary cannot issue such a
letter without the concurrence of the ministry of finance. I was directed to
meet the cabinet minister the next morning.

Another Sleepless Night: Myself and my colleagues
in DAVP spent a sleepless night. The secretary of the ministry had conveniently
stayed away from the ministerial meetings and refused to give me an audience
for seeking his guidance. They would not even entertain my calls.

The next day’s meeting with H.K.L Bhagat was
destined to be a tense one. He tried his best to persuade me to sign the single
tender contract with the party recommended by Krishnakumar. Bhagat told me that
the government was confident of getting re-elected and I need not have to worry
about any kind of post–election problems like an enquiry into the matter. Further,
I was promised that I would be elevated to the next level that was anyway long
overdue due to me but had been denied thus far. In response, I submitted a letter
to the minister, seeking immediate leave of absence preparatory to retirement (I
had a decade of service left). I politely pleaded with the minister that the
ministry should grant my request and appoint an immediate replacement, so that
it can go ahead with its production plans. A surprised minister, refused to
accept the letter.

Foot Note: The Congress party election
campaign (1989) was entrusted to Rediffusion agency, and became a landmark, notable
for its snakes and scorpions campaign. A little before the Dussera festival,
there was one more Ad campaign …..Watch this space.